New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

FreeBSD help

post #1 of 5
9/23/04 at 1:16am
Thread Starter 
Well, I've officially given up on RedHat/Fedora's bull****. I spent around two weeks downloading 6 GB of ISO images (1 DVD and 4 CDs), only to burn 8 total coasters: 1 DVD coaster, and 7 CDs. All because they can't make standard ISO images which Nero can burn effectively. And this wasn't the first time, either. Had the same problems with Redhat 9 and FC 1.

Anyway, I've decided to switch to a better OS anyway. I've heard a lot of good things about FreeBSD, and I've decided to give it a shot, so I started downloading a few hours ago. I'm looking to install the AMD64 version on my eMachines 6810, and was wondering if anyone could tell me what to expect and watch out for? I already know not to expect wireless networking, since Broadcom "doesn't deal directly with customers", and ATI won't support 64 bit Linux/UNIX until the fall of Christianity, but other than that?

Sorry. I'm a bit cynical tonight.
Reply
Reply
post #2 of 5
9/23/04 at 5:04am
I can tell you one thing if you've given up on RedHat/Fedora, FreeBSD is not going to be a picnic. Mainly because its very commandline oriented. While you can get X kde and all that fancy GUI stuff your either going to have to compile from source or use the Ports system. Also FreeBSD ports is gear towards increidble stabitly so new stable releases are few and far between. Which means your likely need to complie the newest stuff manually. There are also some diffrences in running a BSD system then Linux one. File system is diffrent as well and some of they way devices are displayed. Im not sure if its any better now then when I started using it. Also the installer is bare minium ncurses style. If you've tried to install slackware before the install interface is exactly like that. Last time i installed bsd was around version 4.3 which was around 6 years ago.

Im not trying to discourage you from trying BSD out but IMO BSD is definately more for server implentations then it is for desktops. Im sure there are some people out there who will displute this and say that BSD is the greatest thing on earth and that its perfect for the desktop, im not one of them. But if you can get it working and like it then more power to you.
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 5
9/23/04 at 8:24am
never installed FreeBDS but i did run a live cd of it...or atleast tried. I gave up rather soon. I do agree with you that RedHat/Fedora is crap. I used RH9 and tried o install FC2 (every single cd came out corrupt...i burned with nero). As of right now, my 2 favorite distros from about a dozen i tried so far is Mandrake 10 (using on my lappy) and Suse 9.1 (using personal on my desky...planning to get pro)
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 5
9/23/04 at 10:59pm
Thread Starter 
Well, I have some experience with other versions of Linux (SuSE, Mandrake, Turbo Linux), but most of my experience comes from RedHat (5.2-9.0, FC 1) so command line tweaking doesn't scare me too much. I just want a version of Linux/UNIX/Solaris that I can download, burn to a CD with Nero, and have it actuallu work. Redhat did for years until around RH 9 (maybe 8), when there were special adjustments you had to make to get the installer to recognize the CD. At first I thought it was a great idea...now I think it totally sucks.

Anyway, if there are better versions of Linux out there, which are easy to burn to CD, I'd happily try them. I'm just uninterested in burning more coasters. I looked at Gentoo and Debian, but it seems they're more interested in talking about their OS and telling you to pull the ISOs off BitTorrent rather than pointing you to a file server. Plus, Gentoo looks like a boar to install.
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 5
9/24/04 at 1:21am
Speaking as a Gentoo user, give it a try. As to the torrent thing, I just checked on Gentoo's site. A whole three clicks to get to the mirror list. If you think that Gentoo is gonna be bad stay away from any of the BSDs. You have no clue how bad that is gonna be. Now before you BSDers get bent out of shape you know what I mean. It's not for the faint of heart. As to your coaster issues. that's what an MD5sum is for. I serously doubt it was Nero causing the problem. I've used Nero to burn several ISOs of FC2, Gentoo, etc. Google for a windows based md5sum checker. It will save you some headaches down the road.
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Linux & Other OS's